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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29776362">dreams &amp; memories.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinketh/pseuds/trinketh'>trinketh</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>i just have a lot of feelings about cassandra de rolo [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series), Critical Role (Web Series) RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Near Death Experiences, Stockholm Syndrome, chapter 2 is sweeter i promise because i hurt my own feelings and had to make it better, i love percy too i promise, ones they twisted to make her rely more on them, sylas and delilah are mentioned but not full characters really, unpacking memories that the briarwoods used against cassandra</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:42:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,720</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29776362</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinketh/pseuds/trinketh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Briarwood's most effective tools to tear at Cassandra are those that already exist in her head.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassandra de Rolo &amp; Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>i just have a lot of feelings about cassandra de rolo [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188557</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>dreams &amp; memories.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So this is my first crack at some Critical Role fanfiction! I've been rp'ing Cass on tumblr for a few months now and I love her and her emo brother very very much. Recently I was talking to my friend who writes Percy with me, and we were talking about how Cass and Percy were growing up together, and we came to the conclusion that she probably followed him around and bothered the absolute hell out of him on a daily basis until she grew up enough/was taught better than to bother him so often and so much.</p><p>And THEN I found a piece of fanart -- I haven't been able to find an actual link to it because I saw it on pinterest, but it's signed with the username "@amareants", and it's a bunch of sketches of just that: baby Cass clinging to Percy at every chance she gets, and him looking utterly frustrated.</p><p>These two things combined, and boom, fic! Please be kind! A sweeter follow up has been published right after this one, and follows a similar POV but doesn't hurt my feelings xo</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A dream, a memory, a small hand gripping onto older brother’s belt, the only way she’s able to keep up with his far longer strides, the only way she can conceive to keep him close and possibly gain his attention. She looks up, seeks out his eyes, his expression -- by now, she knows the grimace there well, knows that it’s the face that means “<em> Cassandra is annoying me again and I’m about to snap” </em> , but snapping at her is attention, right? At least for a few short seconds before her tears bubble up and she has to try to remember her lessons, try to recall the reminders of her tutors and her parents that de Rolos don’t cry, especially not when other people can see them, but those lessons are hard to stick to when she’s six years old and the only thing in the world that she wants is a small smile, an <em> anything </em> from her favorite big brother that isn’t this grimace that she always, always, always inspires.</p><p>She’s unsurprised when it happens, unsurprised when her hand is pried from his belt and the glower turns to words that hurt somehow less, somehow more, when he continues down the hallway at a speed he knows, <em> he knows </em> that she cannot keep up with without falling. She watches him go, eyes burning, and she curses herself when one falls.</p><p> </p><p>**</p><p>
  <em>It’s all right, darling, we’ll stay beside you. </em>
</p><p>**</p><p> </p><p>A dream, a memory, a tiny form sneaking into her favorite brother’s workshop. It’s loud in here, and dirty, and both her mother and her brother tell her that she’s not allowed in here (for different reasons: Mother says that it’s too dangerous for little ladies and her brother doesn’t give a reason, just tells her to get out every time). But she’s good at sneaking, getting better at it every day, and he’s easily distracted when he’s engulfed in his work. He makes such pretty drawings, she thinks, and even though he only tries to make some of them real they’re all wonderful and she wishes that she could think up such pretty things too. But she’d managed to secure a blank piece of vellum somewhere (she’s getting as good at taking as she is at sneaking, even if it isn’t what a lady should do, and she does so try to be a lady even at nine, but sometimes there’s pieces of parchment hanging out of notebooks and she wants to impress her brother, and she won’t feel badly about it if it works) -- she’s managed to secure a blank piece of vellum somewhere and she’s drawn something of her own on it, not as good as brother’s, but she tried her best and she’s proud of it and she hopes he will be too, as she approaches him with piece clutched tight, bouncing by his elbow with her gift.</p><p>She’s unsurprised by it, looking back, but the grimace this time hurts her to see, stings her heart in a way she doesn’t like one bit, a gruff few words sending her on her way without even a moment of consideration. Small hands tighten into fists, crumpling the little drawing of a little girl with ribbons in her hair and a taller boy with glasses side by side. When she gets back to the nursery she makes a motion to toss it into the fire -- but before it can fully catch, she snatches it back, fingertips scorched, and she tucks the drawing away instead, in the back of a book where she’ll never look at it again, not ever, she swears it, not when the simple thing the picture contains feels so incredibly far from her grasp.</p><p> </p><p>**</p><p>
  <em> Don’t worry, you’re home now, with us. </em>
</p><p>**</p><p> </p><p>A dream, a memory, following her favorite older brother into the woods as he goes to sketch the newly budding plants. No hand on his belt this time, no, she’s too old now for such silly things, but instead she’s worked hard to remain undetected by him for as long as she can, to see where he’s going and to maybe go there too. She hasn’t tried to give him a drawing again, hasn’t opened the book where her first one is hidden, still pesters him for attention but in a different way (a stubbornly more ladylike way, now that she’s twelve and three quarters, now that it’s easier to behave like she’s far older than she is to at least attempt any sort of equal footing with her siblings -- being the youngest of seven is a terrible burden, and she wouldn’t wish it on another). She makes herself known as he settles down to sketch, sits down by his side when she knows he’s too enthralled in his work to flee, even when she knows that her curiosity and inspection of his sketches is making him make <em> that </em> face again, the one she’s quietly dubbed <em> the Cassandra scowl </em> , even when she knows she’s crossed a line with him that will end in cruel words and at the very least an emotional shoving of her as far away from him as he can get her. But she’s determined today -- he won’t be able to get her very far, he <b>won’t</b>.</p><p>She’s surprised by it, this time. Surprised by the fact that after she thought she’d closed her eyes for <em> just a second </em>, she’d fallen asleep -- surprised by the fact that she wakes up in the little grove on her own as the sun begins to dip over the treetops. Luckily, she isn’t lost, she knows the castle’s grounds too well for such a thing, and by the time she makes it home her feet ache almost as much as her heart, and she accepts the scoldings from both her parents and her tutors with a composed if tired face.</p><p> </p><p>**</p><p>
  <em>We’re not going anywhere, never, do you understand?</em>
</p><p>**<br/>
<br/>
A dream, a memory, preparations are being made for the following night’s dinner guests, the youngest child caught up in it all as her tutors and nurses are otherwise occupied. She has nothing to do with her time and nowhere to go, so she’s been walking the halls, hoping for someone to talk to. Her feet, having traveled this path many times before, take her to her favorite brother’s workshop door, where she can hear sounds of him working. A step forward towards the door, a small fist raised to knock --</p><p>-- and this time she surprises herself, when fist lowers to her side without knocking and, instead, the girl turns away to try and find, perhaps, a book to read instead.</p><p> </p><p>**</p><p>
  <em>You never have to ask for us, we’re already there. </em>
</p><p>**<br/>
<br/>
A dream, a memory, darker than the rest and simultaneously the blurriest and the clearest. Siblings at first kept apart, and then the screams of her family ringing in her ears; the magnitude of what has happened to them and what will soon happen to her beginning to weigh on fragile shoulders. But she feels the spark, the strike of her stubborn flint against her iron backbone, and she finds a way out of her cell, the lock slipping open between the work of her fingers and her hairpin. Quick, quiet steps take her away from her imprisonment, making her way towards her exit and her freedom, when her eyes catch on the form of her favorite brother in the corner of a cell much like the one that had just been her own. She almost can’t help herself, she really can’t, even though she knows that he doesn’t care for her as much as she does for him, they’re all that they have now, and she cannot bear the thought of leaving him behind, not now, not ever. Hairpin works a second time as he’s freed, pale hands gripping each other for a long moment before the two of them turn and run, run towards the outside world and the hope of survival.</p><p>She’s surprised by many things, in the following minutes. Surprised by the alarm that sounds and those that give chase. Surprised by the first arrow, the second, the third. Surprised at the coldness of the snow compared to the warmth of her lifeblood. Surprised at how little she wants to die, now that it’s a possibility seconds away from becoming a reality. But most of all she’s surprised by the fact that her favorite older brother doesn’t turn, doesn’t look back, doesn’t try to help her, just keeps running in the direction that they were supposed to be running together.</p><p> </p><p>**</p><p>
  <em>We won’t leave you, daughter, not like he did, you matter to us, you have a purpose with us. </em>
</p><p>**</p><p> </p><p>The dreams and the memories coalesce together, are melded and molded into a dagger to sink into his back should he ever return to Whitestone. Many memories are hazy, deemed less important than others, everything at the whim of the Briarwoods, at her new family. Here she doesn’t have to worry about being pushed away, as long as she does what she’s told -- here, she’s loved, they say, unconditionally, they say, as they add their conditions. But they’re all she has, all she knows, now, every memory of every slight and every scowl categorized and weaponized and at the fingertips of they who treat her as a daughter. It’s almost nice, even as it hurts, even as the vindictive feeling in her chest bubbles and pops in ways that burn more than she’d ever thought they would.</p><p>It’s his surprise, now, that she sees, that she feels momentarily delighted to finally witness, as she denounces him, renounces the de Rolos, aligns herself with those that took her in, made her more than she once was, a broken-hearted seventh child who had been left behind repeatedly and, as they told her, purposefully, every single step of the way.</p><p>As she walks away, her new father’s arm around her shoulders and her new mother’s fingers gently removing themselves from her hair, she realizes something -- something that inspires in her an uncomfortable feeling. She’s surprised that, as good as it felt to momentarily have the upper hand, to be able to spurn him as he had once spurned her, there’s a small, stubborn part of her that doesn’t enjoy it as much as she thinks that she should.</p>
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